Etymology

This editable Main Article is under development and not meant to be cited; by editing it you can help to improve it towards a future approved, citable version. These unapproved articles are subject to a disclaimer.

To take an example, consider the English word nice. Etymologically, the meaning of that particular word has changed a great deal over the centuries. While today it means 'pleasant' (and possibly a little bland), in Middle English it meant 'stupid', and before that, as the Latinnescius, the meaning was 'ignorant'.[1] Etymologists would be interested in how and why these changes took place. To a linguist, however, these developments are important only in so far that they provide evidence of general tendencies in language change, e.g. that meanings drift in certain ways and that words do not remain 'fixed' in their meaning. Since the changes in the meaning of nice are not 'predictable', i.e. it is difficult to discern a pattern that could be used to devise hypotheses about changes elsewhere in English, in other languages or the system of language as a whole, the story of this word would be of limited use in linguistic analysis. To an etymologist, on the other hand, this is an important example in the context of the history of the English language, one which illustrates something of the culture in which the word is employed and the attitudes of speakers.